John Phillips: Yet More Complaints, Straight from 10Best

Are we tuning the radio or launching a missile strike?

Recent News

During 11 consecutive days last month, I drove Car and Driver’s long-term electric-blue Subaru BRZ from Montana to Ann Arbor, then drove all 60 of our 10Best nominees, then drove back to Montana in the “bronze bus”—our long-term Mercedes-Benz GL450. Those 4800-some miles inflicted a silver-dollar-sized blister atop my tailbone. During a routine physical, my doctor shouted, “Hey, ­Darlene, come in here—guy says he got this from car seats.” Various patients in the waiting room began craning their necks.

But I don’t care, because 10Best is so intergalactically entertaining that I always half expect my parents to descend and say, “Okay, had your fun, now let’s get back to the algebra homework.” I love 10Best. It reminds me of a trip to interview Alejandro de Tomaso in 1988. The “Dee-Toe,” as I called him, installed me in the finest suite in his Hotel Canalgrande, then said, “Stay as long as you like, but only if you allow my chef to cook your meals every day.”

“Let me think about it,” I told him.

I logged my first 10Best in September 1989. The maximum base price then was $35,000, and there were 41 nominees, including a Toyota Cressida. Making our list that year was a Mazda MPV minivan whose inclusion so enraged then-editor-at-large Larry Griffin that he punched a hole in a closet door opposite the art department. The hole was never repaired. Here’s how long ago that was: We had just sampled an ETAK Navigator system that would get “somewhat confused and drift off track,” but we had yet to touch a system that relied on satellites.

Which is funny, because this year at 10Best it felt as if every nominee were nav-savvy. I know, because it’s the first thing I attempt: Light up the nav system, tune the radio, then see if there’s an HVAC setting called “Christmas, Resolute Bay.” It’s a routine that has become as difficult as launching a missile strike on Fort Lauderdale. I began recording the steps to pull up the local NPR station. It ranged from 3 to 13 individual operations, with the latter apparently routing me through one car’s Doppler Auto-Taser and into its Electrostatic Shoelace Rejuvenator. It so frustrated me that I was just about to call Industrial Light & Magic but instead sat down in an Acura RLX. It offers a fat volume knob up high, but the on/off switch for the radio is a tiny, black biscuit buried directly next to the volume control. So why couldn’t the volume control, when you spin it to the right, also turn on the radio? Because—and maybe this has always been true—buyers equate gratuitous buttons and knobbery with quality. Or, in my case, with an explosion in the Panasonic factory. Tangential to my complaint, please note that Bill Maher, when asked to characterize the 2000s in Vanity Fair, said, “We mass-produced the first minivan with television sets built into the back seats, eliminating the car trip as the last situation where white people ever have to talk to their children.”

Also about to lap itself in the Indy 500 of Idiocy is Cadillac’s CUE system, which urged me to differentiate between “Infotainment Gestures” by memorizing the seven secret finger movements: “press/tap,” “press and hold,” “drag,” “nudge,” “fling or swipe,” “spread,” and “pinch.” I’m not making this up. Turned out that my personal favorite was “punch real hard,” followed by a finger gesture I already knew.

Yes, my electro-technical failures may be related to crotchetiness, but youthful videographer Mark Arnold was beside me when I climbed into the Infiniti Q50. Sadly, I could summon no radio or HVAC at all. I jammed my hands in my armpits and said, “You try.” Mark squinted and fiddled, then said, “Nothin’, I got nothin’.” Meanwhile, he was recording this tableau on a camera that has almost no buttons at all. So we voted to turn the car off and restart it—twice. Which worked. “How stupid of us,” Mark mumbled, meaning me, I imagine.

I confess that I view any LCD screen in a car as I’d view any other piece of office equipment in a car—say, a Xerox photocopier or a Steelcase credenza. But if at any point you have to consult an owner’s manual, then the ergonomics are wrong.

Back home, I walked over to Wally Karr’s garage, where Wally (the “Babbitt King,” I call him) was, as always, rebuilding flathead Fords. Wally said, “I’ve stopped reading 10Best ’cause it’s always the same—big buncha BMWs and Hondas.” I was a little stung, so I explained that the winners tend to be so dominant in their niches that it takes a few years for competitors to respond. “Good one,” Wally said.

So I recorded all 10Best winners for all 31 years, searching for models that had a suspiciously prolonged shelf life. Turns out the longest unbroken winning streaks belong to the Honda Accord (17 years, from 1998 through 2014) and to BMW’s 3-series (23 years, from 1992 through 2014).

So, Wally, you can expect a case of Heineken and a spanking-fresh batch of babbitt on your doorstep. Thursday, maybe. Christmas, latest.